Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I appreciate the response. I do have very limited knowledge of networking. I can answer your question but can not try anything until this evening as I am at work.
The three browsers were in the same computer. The computer is a Surface so all I have available for connections is WiFi. I am checking with our IT person at work about firewalls as this is a computer that is on a network at work when I am there.
I also tried an IPad with Safari and got the same result. I believe you are correct about the blank page and not waiting long enough. As I could ping IotaWatt and get a response.
I have two WiFi connections in the house. One is simply an extender. All the devices I attempted to connect with were using the same WiFi as the IotaWatt.
As I understand it, the DCHP must be handled by the router the cable company provided.
I do have a light switch, a piece of water equipment, and a solar system that use the same WiFi to connect to the internet. The only other devices that would be on this system are my Surface, IPad, IPhone and an Android phone.
Again thank for any help you can provide. I will let you know the out come of the test you have asked me to try.
You may want to try using a network scanning tool such as “Fing” which works on Android or iOS. Once installed, you can use this to scan you network for IPs and then test connecting to the IPs it lists. Some devices show up as generic which is how it shows my IoTaWatt. Not the long-term solution, but a solution to get the right IP to device at this time. The router the provider gave to you may allow you to configure DHCP allowing you to give the device a static (fixed) IP forever. I do this on mine based on the device MAC address which is also shown in the Fing app.
Be aware that WiFi Extender often rewrite the MAC address of device on the extension side, so it will be different based on how the browser picks up the IoTaWatt. I would install and run Fing first and see what device and such are on your network.
Can you do the iotawatt.local/index.htm again, and then click on the index.htm line in the debug screen. The right side will then show the request and headers. Post that, then click the response tab and post that.
I don’t think you are communicating with the IoTaWatt. You previously said you were using the DHCP of the router provided by you able company. The IP address that your computer says it’s talking to is 23.195.69.106. That doesn’t look like the kind of IP that a cable company router would assign to a ldevice on a local LAN. I’m also baffled by the cache reference in one of the above test requests.
Do you have some kind of VPN installed on your computer or router? This is looking more like a network topology problem.
UPDATE: I looked up that IP and it is owned by Akamai Technologies. They are a content delivery network (CDN) and provide cache services. So bottom line is that your request is being sent out over the internet. How the .local URL was translated to an outside IP is a mystery to me, but it does seem to be happening.
What happens when you try to use the Ipad and Iphone?
I did try the IPad and as I recall it did time out where as with the Surface it is truly a blank page. I will need to confirm this as I have tried so many different avenues. I think it would be helpful to have me try that again to confirm.
If I am getting an outside address how do I prevent that from happening and why might it be happening. As I think about it there is only one device that I connect to locally through the WiFi otherwise the devices are connected to the outside world and I connect to them through the device service providers server. The one system I have that I connect to directly through the my local cable WiFi does not have this issue. Hope that helps.
Below is original response before I got UPDATE
I don’t know about the router. It is provided by Spectrum. I have no trouble communicating with other devices connected to it. I have already mentioned that.
I do use a VPN to log onto my work server remotely but that has to be turned on and off depending on what I am doing. It does not let me be connected to the company server and at the same time cruise the internet. I have to work inside the tunnel when connected. Otherwise it is not supposed to be doing anything. If that were the problem, I would not expect the other devices ( IPad, IPhone, and Android phone) in the house to have the same problem.
I am guessing that there are other customers of IoTaWatt that use Spectrum devices. If the Spectrum router/WiFi was the problem, I would think others would have the same problem.
Some on this thread have suggested assigning a static IP. I don’t know how to do that but is that a possible thing to try since you
think the IP provided may not be coming from the router.
LAN topology and all of the possibilities are endless. Only the largest companies can even begin to dedicate resources to resolve these kinds of issues. Safe to say that if the IoTaWatt doesn’t get the request, it can’t respond to it.
I do think that knowing the IP address of the IoTaWatt would facilitate connecting to it. The “zeroconfig” .local method works most of the time, but there are limitations beyond the control of the receiving host. Basically the originating device broadcasts a message to all devices on the lan asking if there is anyone out there that calls themselves iotawatt. We listen for that and will respond with a message to the sender containing our IP address. Devices originating such connections will remember the name and corresponding IP for subsequent transactions.
So if that isn’t working or isn’t a protocol supported by your PC, you will need the IP address. As far as I know all Apple devices support it because they invented it with their Bonjour service to identify local printers.
One of the replies above references an app that you can use to discover the iotawatt’s IP address. Most routers have the ability to log-in and look at a connected device list. If you can login to the router, yopu can also assign a static local IP to the IoTaWatt.
If you know someone who can do these things, and its becoming a fairly common skill, then I would encourage you to reach out for help.
If it is my understanding that you believe this is the only problem that is causing us to not get the information from IoTaWatt, I will see what I can find out about getting the IP for the IoTaWatt. This may be why others have gone to a fixed IP on their systems. I have some resources that may be able to help me with this.
One last thing before I do that. Is there some way to now connect directly to the IoTaWatt’s WiFi and test it to see that it will present the set up information? Would this confirm the device is working properly and the problem is not that it cannot send out information.
If the LED is glowing dull green, that is a pretty sure indication that it is connected to your WiFi and has successfully transacted with an internet time server. If you have some other LED indication, please advise.
I just experienced the same problem with a new installation, and the problem is resolved. Here is what I found: My router DHCP had assigned an IP address from a device that was turned off, so the DHCP name shown was that of the old device that was turned off, not “iotawatt”. Therefore http://iotowatt.local wouldn’t work. What did work was using the actual ip address- in my case, http://192.168.0.45. The challenge to this solution is finding the DHCP IP address that the device has been assigned. IP scanners might not show it correct, as in my case. Best bet is to find the MAC address of your device, and look for it in your DHCP client list on the router. Then, reserve that IP address for that MAC address in your Router. I would MUCH PREFER being able to set a static IP address- please, Bob?
I’m happy that you worked through this. By far, initial WiFi connection is the most difficult part of setup. The landscape of routers, firewalls, devices and browsers is impossible to deal with comprehensively.
You can easily do that through your router by assigning a static IP to the mac address. Doing it in the IoTaWatt has two disadvantages:
First, it would not have helped this initial connect problem as you had not yet been able to run the configuration app. Catch-22.
Second, from a housekeeping perspective with DHCP active, the router is the place to maintain all static IP assignments so as to avoid conflict and keep everything in one place.
Maybe I am missing something in the IotaWatt, but I don’t see a way to set a static IP address in it. I see no setting for it in the Iotawatt webpages, and search of your documentation returns no answer to setting a static IP address. I can’t assign one in the router without the device being setup up for one that I have assigned to it in the device. I CAN (and have) reserved a DHCP address with corresponding MAC address in the router that the router will give to the IotaWatt when it requests a DHCP address. This is not a static IP address. It does make sure that the IotaWatt will always get the same address when it requests one (everytime it boots up), but does NOT guarantee the router will not give this same address to another device if the IotaWatt is not present- a significant difference between DHCP assigned and static IP addresses.
I’ve never had that problem. My routers have always known not to assign those addresses to other MACs. But in the event your router works that way, if the address that you assign is not in the DHCP pool, it should work fine.
I’m setting up a new IotaWatt and also ran into the blank page when trying to connect to iotawatt.local, using either Firefox (PC) or Chrome (android). Using the Firefox debugger, I see it is connecting to 23.195.69.108 (not .106 as shown above). In fact, anything.local connects to that IP address. I can connect to the IotaWatt using my local IP address. My router has created a DHCP reservation for the IotaWatt.
I was able to get iotawatt.local to work by creating an entry in the hosts file as shown in this topic: Connecting using http://IotaWatt.local That will work for now, but if the IP address ever changes, I’ll have to remember to edit that host file.
I think this is an issue with my router, so I’m not really looking for a solution from IotaWatt, but I’m interested if anyone has any ideas as to why this is happening.
